ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT
When you lack physical stimuli in your environment, your brain does not develop fully, making you have less resilience. In an enriched environment, you are less likely to get ill, recover quicker from diseases and are more likely to get older.
FIVE INFORMATION PATHS / STIMULI
But how do you make a space Enriching? An enriched space is an environment that communicates with the body at at 5 different levels:
MOTOR
VISUAL
COGNITION
SOMATOSENSORY
CIRCADIAN RHYTHM
What these are is explained per element.
VISUAL
ORRIENTATION
When we walk through a space, we create a mind map for navigation. Remarkable spatial objects like church towers, trees, canals and distinguishable buildings are used as beacons by our mind.
NON-INCLUSIVE MOTION
Non-inclusive motion are movements which are pleasant to look at and do not require you to activate them. Pleasant visual stimulion is charactarized by having the following three elements:
- Repetitive
- Ever-changing
- Predictable
MOTOR
MOVEMENT
When a muscle moves, the nervous system is used to transfer information from the body to the brain, overruling the inflammation system which uses the nervous system as well. That is why doctors recommend you to do sports when you are feeling down. Not-moving for too long makes your brain feel sick. Larger movements come with co-ordination. Some activities like cycling on a bicycle require that many calculations, it brings our mind in a state of ecstasy.
COGNITION
1. COMMUNICATION
Anything that requires interpretation is a cognitive stimuli. For example having a conversation requires you to interpret language, body language and facial expression of another person.
2. LEARNING
Anything that challenges you is cognition. Anything that required learning is a cognitive stimuli. For example playing a music instrument, speaking another language or skating.
SOMATOSENSORY
All information perceived with skin is a somatosensory stimuli.
That can be touch, texture, but also humidity and feeling the wind.
Scent and taste are chemical capacities of the skin for sensing
its environment.
by Alissa+Nienke
CIRCADIAN RHYTHM
Alligning the stimuli your bio rhythm is enriching. There are three bio rhythms discovered:
- natural light and the melatonin system
-
nutrition
- social interaction
EE FACTOR
0.
Often highly utilitarian spaces like hospitals, prisons, factories and distribution halls lack a variety of enrichment stimuli
1.
Work environments often rank low on enrichment
2.
The things we like to do are often enriching
3.
Nature has enrichment in omnipresence
EE MAPPING
Govert Flint developed a mapping tool to indicate if stimuli are present in an environment.
-3 omnipresent & toxic
-2 present & negative
-1 present & annoying
0 not present
1 present
2 large positive presence
3 omnipresent & positive